Redemption's Path
by CarolynHucker
Summary: Lucille Sharpe's ghost lays claim to the family estate and begins to make her presence felt.
1. The Peak Awakens

Sgt. Joseph Bell adjusted the collar of his weather cape and pulled down his helmet against the biting wind that hurled itself down the hill from Allerdale.

Digging his frozen hands into the pockets of his coat, he cursed again the twist of fate that led him to be the only man to hand when the inspector decided he wanted the library gallery checked again. So many documents hidden away in corners and small spaces, tucked into books, mouldering from the damp in the house, some stained gorily crimson from the clay.

"Take care of it yourself, Joe - we don't want any more gossip about this case" The Inspector had said. Gossip, thought Joseph. If there was one thing you could guarantee about this situation, it would be gossip.

The house came into view across the moor. Once grand and imposing, it had lost none of its awe, but now it impressed for different reasons. The fact a place suffering such dilapidation was still standing was impressive in itself - it looked like some great broken beetle lurking there on the hill, waiting to devour its victims. And devour them it did, apparently.

Talk about cursed, Joseph thought. How many violent deaths, how many lost souls, did it take to make a place permanently living and evil. He wished he could turn around and let the bitter wind blow him back down the valley to the town.

The iron gates, hanging open now, squeaked as they swung a little in the wind. The gateway, with its crest above. A crest with two mottos. The first was a quote quote from Psalm 121 - I lift up mine eyes unto the hills. But the second read Mors Vincit Omnia . Death Conquers All, the inspector told him it said. What sort of motto is that for a family to live by? He trudged up the last remaining yards to the great doors that opened into what had, two hundred years ago, been one of the finest halls in the county, maybe in the country. Joseph's grandmother had worked at Allerdale Hall in the days of Sir Thomas' grandfather, Sir Edward, and had told stories of grand balls, where the public rooms had glowed with the light of a thousand candles and the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Sharpe had descended the great staircase like an angel coming down from heaven, with diamonds in her hair glittering like suns in the golden glow.

The house's grim influence had hit Lady Elizabeth hard, Joseph thought. She had given birth to a stillborn daughter two years after the marriage, and then a boy a year later that had died after a few days. Just three years after that she died in childbirth giving birth to James, Thomas and Lucille's father. Lady Elizabeth's husband Sir Edward had never recovered, closeting himself in the mine office, obsessed with mining the crimson clay of the hill. James had grown up strange and isolated, with his father's obsession with the red clay mines and a dangerously intractable and unforgiving nature. He did not, however have his father's business skills. That, combined with loss of trade with an unstable America, led to the dwindling of the family fortune and the loss of the mining business. This despite his marriage of convenience to Beatrice - wealthy heiress to a widowed father who thought a monied husband with a title would bring his elegant daughter the place she coveted in society. She had been sorely disappointed there, Joseph thought grimly.

Joseph had by now reached the doors, and fished in his pocket for the keys which until so recently had hung from the belt of Lady Lucille Sharpe. He had seen her once when she had come into the town. Beautiful and elegant in peacock blue velvet, with raven hair and porcelain skin like the French doll the Inspector's wife treasured so dearly. Lady Lucille was so beautiful, even with the small scars on her face. A legacy of her brutal father, and nothing to the huge livid scars across her back, if the coroner's assistant was to be believed.

* * *

The heavy door swung in, and he walked across the small ante-room to the open archway leading onto a room that still took his breath away, despite his having seen it so often this last few weeks. And it was a few weeks that would be indelibly etched on his mind. The memory sent an involuntary shudder through him, and raised a bead of sweat on his brow despite the cold.

The hall rose majestically through the height of the house, with the ornately carved staircase rising round the walls to galleries at the entrance to each floor. For a moment he imagined the hall full of light, and happy dancers, before a snowflake landed on his face, bringing him back to the present and the task in hand. His eyes took in the gaping hole in the roof, and the break in the rotted floor, where Lady Edith had landed after being pushed from an upper floor by the deranged Lady Lucille. The great fireplace faced him, cold and dark now. He momentarily thought he caught a wisp of black smoke drifting across the opening, but it must have been his imagination, or one of the fat brown moths that still infested the place despite the cold. The fire had not been lit since that chaotic day when they had come onto the scene to find Lady Edith and the American doctor badly injured, and the bodies of Lady Lucille by the mining machine and of Sir Thomas in Lucille's attic room. And that was just the fresh bodies.

He passed through into the long main room, with its two distinct halves echoing the siblings' personalities - Lucille's full of a ramshackle collection of furniture scavenged from the rest of the house, chaotic and busy, her piano somehow crammed into the cluttered space. Thomas' less cluttered, but still littered with drawings and models of his inventions. His library was in this half, lit by a tall window looking out over the mine workings and the bleak hills beyond.

Jacob climbed the small stair up to the gallery level of the library, and made his way to the very end. Here the light was poor and he went back and lit a lamp from Thomas' desk. Some paperwork lay beneath the lamp and he picked it up and looked at it in the purer light from the window. It was a letter from Lady Beatrice to her husband detailing the number of servants she had needed to get rid of. It was dated March 1880, some six months before Sir James' death. He put the letter back down and took the lamp up to the end of the gallery.

Starting at one end of the massive bookcase he pulled a thin volume 'Shibden Mine proceedings 1875-1876', but there was nothing hidden in there other than the minutiae of the clay mine at Shibden. This looked like being a riveting assignment.

He worked his way along the shelf, gradually becoming more interested in the volumes he found, becoming so engrossed that he could not say for certain at what point the sound had started. He gradually became aware of the noise as the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Such an ordinary sound really, and yet so much out of place in the supposedly deserted house. The sound of a waltz being played on the piano at the other end of the room - it hadn't just started, he was certain of that - it had sort of faded into being.

As he turned to walk along the gallery to a point where he could see the piano, the noise stopped abruptly. He quickened his pace and all but ran down the stair to the floor of the room - there was no one there, and he had neither seen nor heard anyone leave the room, just again that imaginary wisp of black smoke. Or maybe it was another of the dark moths. That was the explanation, surely.

He doubted, now. Doubted that he had heard anything at all, but doubted that his imagination could possibly have invented such a thing unbidden. He halfheartedly walked the length of the room, but did not really expect to find anything.

Satisfied, at last, that there was no-one else there, and that he had just let his imagination run away with him, he turned and walked back up the stair to the library gallery. He picked out a random volume, bored with his systematic working from the end of the shelf. Opening it, he dislodged a slim sheet which fluttered out to land at his feet. He picked it up and saw that it was a letter - from Sir Thomas' third wife Enola. A letter that was obviously never posted.

'My dearest Irena,' He read. 'I have not heard from you since my last to you on the 3rd. I have not improved, I am sorry to say. Indeed my cough has become more pronounced, and I coughed up blood last night. I do not see enough of Thomas, and I am very much afraid that Lucille is not as she seemed. In short, I fear that she does not wish me to improve. The last time I saw Thomas I told him that the firethorn tea Lucille gives me does not help me at all. He said that it is simply that the atmosphere in Yorkshire is so alien to me and that I will improve once I am acclimated. He has been very kind to me. I only wish that he would be more.. shall we say, demonstrative in his affections; every night he is off to his workshop with his models and generally does not come to me until after I am asleep.'

Joseph stopped reading - he felt like an intruder on this poor woman's thoughts and confessions to her intimate friend. Although the Inspector had wanted evidence, and this was evidence, Joseph felt like he was seeing things he should not, and did not want to. He wondered whether 'Irena' had ever heard again from the unfortunate Enola after her marriage to Sir Thomas and removal to Yorkshire.

Joseph suddenly realised that he could hear a piano again - not from the obscured other end of this room, but from further away into the house. He was confused. Where else would there be a piano?

Tucking the tragic letter into his tunic pocket, he descended to the floor of the room, taking the lit lamp with him. He again walked the length of the room, but the piano could still be heard, distinctly, drifting through from the hall. He suddenly found himself not wanting to enter the hall, despite it being, not only the way to the rest of the house, but also his way out of the house.

The hairs on the back of his neck raised again. There was no denying it. No blaming it on an overactive imagination, or one of Mr Dickens' 'undigested lump of cheese'. There was the unmistakable sound of a waltz being played on the piano. Played very well, but he felt that this was not the time to be appreciating music - especially music that had no business being there.

It's Her. The involuntary thought flitted through his mind. It's Lady Lucille. She played the piano, and played well by all accounts. Then his rational mind closed round the thought and smothered it. No. She is dead. Dead and gone and laid out quietly next to her brother in the family vault in the chapel. Dead, with her brains dashed out with a spade by a desperate Lady Edith in fear for her life. Not that that would ever get out. Not after everything they found at Allerdale Hall.

He edged out into the hall. Snow drifted lightly down through the gaping roof to settle softly on the broken boards beneath. Despite the chill, sweat started to bead his upper lip and forehead. The sound of the piano was more distinct here, brittle in the sharp air. It must be someone playing in one of the upper rooms. A real, living human being come into the house from the town to play a trick on him. His breath condensed into a cloud around his head as he worked his way carefully around the hall. The boards gave a little, but they were more than usually supported by the frozen clay beneath and only creaked occasionally.

He looked over towards the elevator, marvelling that such a contraption should be incorporated into a private house at all, let alone one in the wilds of Yorkshire. It seemed so out of place. He wondered if it would work. He edged towards it, and the sound of the piano became a little clearer. He realised now that the sound was coming not from the upper rooms, but from below, drifting up the elevator shaft.

Joseph thought better than to use the elevator. Too noisy. No need to give the prankster any warning that his game had been discovered. Joseph was still going with his theory that this was nothing more than a joke being played on him by one of his fellow policemen - probably drew lots to see who would have to come up to the Hall to scare him. The Sharpes probably had a phonograph that was being played down there to try to scare him.

He moved through to the hallway by the kitchen and made his way down the stairs there to the next level down. The cellar was cold and dank, and the walls dripped with the red clay making them look as though they were bleeding. The drift of black smoke caught his eye again, drawing him further down the cellar stairs to the next level.

On this level were settling tanks for the scarlet clay that the Sharpe family had mined for two hundred years. Where the Sharpe siblings had hidden their victims' bodies and dumped their belongings. Ahead of him, at the bottom of the stairs, were some of those belongings. A steamer trunk and other oddments, the pitiful remnants of lives taken by the Sharpes in their quest to preserve the family home and the mines. Joseph was never quite clear on whether Sir Thomas had had much of a hand in the actual killings - certainly one of his wives died while he was away from the Hall. His sister Lady Lucille had been 'sent away' for a while after the death of their father. But Sir Thomas had, apparently without any qualms or hesitation, assisted in the plan and in the disposal of bodies in these very settling pits. The memory of dredging up bodies and bones from the pits, all stained redder than they would have been when they went into the pits, made Joseph's stomach flip for a moment. The remains dripping gory crimson onto the tiled floor as piece after piece was pulled from the vats was an image that would stay with him for ever.

He could no longer hear the piano music. He did not know when it had stopped, but he had been sure it was coming from this floor. There was only silence now. He did not think there was any other way out of this room, other than by scaling the mining equipment to the surface. Surely not even the most dedicated joker would want to do that.

Joseph walked slowly the length of the room, looking behind each of the settling vats. There really was no-one there and now the first hints of actual fear began to make themselves felt. What the Hell was going on? No one could have passed him, so where had the music come from and where was the player. He turned, and there was the wisp of black smoke again, drifting across the width of the room about halfway down.

He stared at it, wondered for a second if there was a fire there, but it faded even as he watched. Then he saw it again. It materialised at the end of the row of tanks, seeming to grow out of the air itself. It drifted, but not quite like smoke. He was very frightened now, crossed himself, but was drawn towards it unwillingly.

'Our Father who art in ..' he began, in a small shaky voice that was barely his. His throat dried before he could finish the line, halting his voice.

He felt his legs moving forward, though he wanted to turn and run, climb the filthy mining equipment to the surface and freedom. The smoke ahead of him grew thicker as he drew closer, coalescing into a tall form, still smoke-like, like a reflection seen in a window in the dark. He could swear it was Lady Lucille's form!

His will regained the control of his body, and he turned and fled down the room, the mining machine now his door to freedom. He did not get far. He felt a push as he ran, and tipped headlong into one of the deep, gory vats, drawing in red liquid clay, coughing and spluttering with tears of pure terror now running from his eyes.

He fought to the surface of the sucking, sticky liquid - to look straight into the sunken eye sockets of a face he recognised as Lady Lucille Sharpe. Ravaged and red as the clay he floundered in, but the face he knew from that one sight of her. He opened his mouth to scream, but a bony scarlet hand pressed down on his head and he just sucked in clay instead. The hand pressed down harder, as Joseph Bell's struggles grew ever weaker, and weaker, and finally ceased.

* * *

In York, Edith Sharpe sat at a writing desk in the small hotel where she and Alan McMichael had taken rooms. Suddenly she sat bolt upright, fear etched on her face, as a piercing pain shot through her abdomen. She grabbed at the desk for support, shaking the inkwell. A drop of ink spilled onto her dress. Her face grew white, her vision filled with red - red as the clay of her recent home - as she saw that the stain on her dress had formed the familiar shape of one of the fat brown moths that infested Allerdale Hall.

* * *

Lucille drew herself up to her full height, revitalised by the life she had stolen from the policeman. This was her home. Hers and Thomas', and she would protect it from all comers. She made her way to her piano in the main room. Where was Thomas? She would find him. Find him and make him hers again. His body had been hers, his heart had been hers, his spirit would be hers, no matter what that weakling Edith had thought. Well Edith had lost. Lost Thomas, lost Allerdale, run away with her American Doctor. She would never return. Allerdale Hall belonged to the Sharpe siblings, and would do so for all time, until the sun grew cold and the stars went out.

Strains of a waltz drifted from the Hall, out of the doors and over the moor.


	2. Tiny Wings

Inspector Regan sat at his desk in his darkening office wondering why Sgt Bell had not yet reported back to him from Allerdale Hall.

"Constable Heath!" He yelled. A moment later young Heath poked his head round the door.

"Sgt Bell back yet?" Regan queried.

"No sir, he's not. Should I send a runner out to meet him, Sir? Only it's growing dark and two lamps are better than one on the moor roads."

"I am aware that it is growing dark, Heath. I think a runner might be a good idea." A sudden unease struck him. "Send two men, Heath. In fact, you go and take Constable Foster with you. Make sure you have the big lamps, not those nurse-maid's night lights you carry about the town."

"Very good, Sir." Heath replied in a tone that made it quite clear that it was not very good. Not very good at all.

* * *

Regan suppressed a smile, at least until Heath was out of the room. Heath was a bit green, but once he got to grips with the discipline he had the makings of a fine Policeman, maybe even a good rank one day. A jaunt up the moor road to meet the tardy Sgt Bell would do him good. Show him there is more to do than chat up the butcher's daughter on his patrol route. Regan actually laughed out loud as he crossed the room to light his lamp. He suddenly felt a chill, and turned to drop some wood on the tiny fire, but as he did so, the fire flared, almost catching his hand in the flame. He straightened up out of its way quickly, but the flare had died down. He dropped the wood onto the fire anyway.

* * *

Heath and Foster were, by this time, on their way out of the station, equipped with thick weather capes and the large (and heavy) lanterns. They said nothing to each other until they were well out of the door and down the the road out of town leading in the direction of Allerdale Hall.

Once safely out of earshot of man and beast they commenced complaining about their assignment, going out after Bell as though he were a lost puppy.

"You know he'll be furious when he sees us." Foster grumbled. "He'll think the Inspector doesn't trust him to get back safely, and he'll take it out on us."

"The Inspector doesn't trust him to get back by himself, Foster. That's why he's sent his two most trusted men to retrieve him from his plight of getting lost on the only track between town and Allerdale Hall!"

The two young men laughed.

"Really though, I wonder why he suddenly took it into his head to send two of us?" Foster said. The thought occurred to him that the Inspector must have a good reason to send two constables out in the growing dark of a winter afternoon to meet a man known for being perfectly able to stand his ground against all comers.

The wind was even more bitter now as the brief day gave way to darkness. The two constables' breath condensed in the air around their heads like halos, illuminated by the light of their lamps so that from a distance they looked the glowing ghosts of a couple of byzantine saints.

The moor road out to Allerdale was quite broad and clear, worn over two hundred years of foot and wheeled traffic to the Hall and the clay mines. There was no way for even a careless, pre-occupied man to wander from it, especially now when the surface was frozen solid and hard to the foot. Even in full dark the Sergeant was not likely to have wandered more than a few feet from it, if that, before realising his mistake and cutting back onto it.

The further the two constables travelled the more they began to wonder, though, if the Sergeant had, in fact, managed to go astray.

"He's not still up at the Hall?"

"He must be, Foster, or we'd have met up with him by now."

* * *

The large bullseye lamps sent straight beams across the track and onto the moors, largely hidden now by the winter dimness of the late afternoon. Nothing stirred within the beams, and the two men plodded on, acutely aware of the biting cold that descended on them along with the darkness.

Foster pulled up sharply, his hand on the other man's arm.

"What was that?"

"What was what?" Heath said, voice sharp with surprise.

"I saw something, over to the left there at the top of the rise"

Heath peered into the dim light of dusk. "Well what was it?"

"I don't know - it wasn't clear. It was dark. Like a cloud of midges drifting"

"Midges? It's the middle of winter you daft bugger, how would it be midges?"

"Smoke, then. Something."

Heath breathed hard and straightened up.

"It's almost dark, Foster. It was just a trick of the light, nothing sinister. Let's get moving, it's too cold to stand around imagining smoke"

They walked on, Foster shining his lamp around them as though he expected something to rear up out of the darkness if he didn't illuminate as much of the moor as possible.

Little more than ten minutes later they passed through the open gates to Allerdale Hall. The gates still swung on their squeaking hinges, the eerie noise drifting out into the darkness.

"So will Lady Edith return here, do you think?" The younger man asked.

"Would you, Foster? I mean, the place is cheerless enough, but the murders? The bodies? Her own husband murdered by that madwoman? I would want to be as far from here as possible if I was her."

"I think there are people in the town would be glad to have the Hall taken care of, lived in again. Then again there are more that think the place is cursed. I think some of them would rather see it torn down."

"Well, maybe her ladyship will do just that, once all this is settled."

The two men stopped before the great door to the Hall. Heath turned the handle and the door swung open into darkness.

"Well he must still be here - he wouldn't be likely to leave the doors unlocked." Heath stepped carefully into the anteroom, aware that parts of the floor were unstable.

The two men stepped through into the main hall. Even in the darkness, in the shifting light from their lamps, this was obviously a room designed to impress.

"Let's get some lamps lit so we can actually see. Sgt Bell must be around somewhere and we won't find him in the dark."

They managed to find two lamps in the hall, and lit them. They put out the bullseye lamps to conserve them for the journey back. The house lamps shed a warmer, wider light.

Foster hung back, staring up at the stair-encircled Hall. Embellishments of carved wood dripped from balconies and bulged from the mould-scarred walls.

"They threw everything at this place didn't they? They must have used every tree in a hundred miles."

They moved through to the long room where the Sharpe siblings had held court. Lucille's piano crouched in the middle of her half of the room, keys showing like bared teeth. More lamps stood on tables and the men lit those that had oil. It was obvious that Sgt Bell was not in this long room, but in the brighter light of the lamps they could see his weather cape and helmet on the desk in Sir Thomas's part of the room.

"Well that answers that, then, he's definitely here." Foster said.

"Unless he's left his coat and gone off across the moor in search of your smoke."

Foster laughed goodnaturedly. Bell was the last person to do anything so impetuous. He was nothing if not sober and staid in thought and deed.

"So, do you want to start with the upstairs or the downstairs?"

"Split up. Flip a coin for up or down." Heath fished in his tunic for a penny. He tossed it up and caught it neatly. "Heads or tails?"

"Er, heads"

Heath lifted his hand. The coin was tails up. "Well Foster, looks like you start in the Attic. I'll start down on the settling floor."

* * *

Neither man wanted to use the rickety looking lift that ran through the hall, so Heath headed for the kitchen corridor that led to the stairs down to the cellars, then deeper to the settling tanks and mines.

Foster eyed the aged, extravagantly carved stairs as though he wasn't convinced they'd bear his weight. The rest of the hall was no inspirer of confidence - red clay oozed through the floor and walls, and the hole in the roof invited in drifts of leaves, snow and whatever else nature threw at it.

"Come on, they've survived all this time. They'll last a bit longer" Foster reassured himself. He placed a foot gingerly on the first step and was surprised to find it was sturdy and solid underfoot.

"Well, that's not so bad."

He followed the stairs upwards, examining the wooden carvings on the way. He was impressed by the craftsmanship that had gone into the work, though he felt he would have found it oppressive to live with. "No wonder they were all a bit mad." He thought.

He reached the Attic floor, and wandered through the rooms there. He was surprised, and slightly disgusted, by the fat brown moths that seemed to emerge from the walls as he passed. He made a slight gagging noise as one of them brushed against his face.

The siblings had had their rooms here. Sir Thomas's room was the haven of a mad genius, mechanical marvels littering every surface. Tiny feats of engineering that would have delighted the visitors to the Great Exhibition sat discarded on tables. Here was evidence of a man whose path in life should have led to recognition and fulfillment. What led him to the life of deception, wife-murder and other unspeakable sins?

There was, however no evidence of Sgt Bell in this room. A wisp of smoke floated across the room at the edge of the circle of light cast by the lamp. Foster paused, fearing fire. He moved back through the room, waved the lamp to check for more smoke, but all he saw were more of the fat moths.

* * *

Edith Sat once more at the small writing desk in her room. Since the episode this afternoon she had been unable to shift the unease from her mind. The dark room was lit only by the small fire, but she had not yet lit the lamps.

Alan had checked her over and could see nothing to immediately account for the pain, though her temperature was raised. He was worried, but would not let her see it. Of course she saw this.

"As a doctor I would advise you to rest, Edith, but I am also your friend, and as such I will tell you that you should think about going home to America. You know I will have to go back sometime, and I would like you to consider coming back with me." He had said.

Edith did want to go back, but also she had to sort out the future of the hall. As the widow of Sir Thomas, Allerdale Hall, the mines and land were hers. She needed to decide what to do about it. Needed to, yet could not.

She knew that the bodies of Thomas's wives and all the other remains had been removed and decently buried, but her heart and mind could not contain the quantity of information she had to consider in order to make the decisions she had to make. She could not simply leave. And something else stopped her, too. Unfinished business, unease and - fear? But they were gone now. Dead and gone. Thomas, Lucille.

"love makes monsters of us all" Lucille had said. But Lucille was mad, born or driven insane. Was Thomas as insane as she?

It bothered Edith that she still loved Thomas. She should hate him, but she could not. He had been twisted by cruel parents and a mad sister. And he had loved her, Edith. He had told her so that wonderful night they had finally claimed each others' passion. It had been everything she had longed for, everything she had waited for. He had told her that he loved her, and that he planned they should leave the Hall and the mines, and Lucille. Leave and be together, be a family. That was what he had wanted. With her. And even though Lucille's hold over him had dragged him back to her that last night, Edith still knew it was her he loved and planned a new life with.

A tear fell from her eye. It still hurt so much, losing him so soon after finally finding him. Sometimes she dreamed of him in her arms, loving her, giving himself to her as she gave herself to him, and she would awake breathing hard and drenched with sweat, alone and bereft.

And now she knew the time for a decision was near. The pain, the moth shape on her dress, they had been a message, that seemed clear. But from whom? From Thomas? One of his wives? Or from Lucille?

* * *

Heath had worked his way through the cellar unmolested by anything worse than cobwebs and the occasional moth. He could see no trace of Sgt Bell, so he carried on to the part of the house that he disliked the most - the clay settling tanks.

It was here that they had spent the most time over those days of fishing for body parts in the scarlet depths of the pits. It was not a task for any sensitive soul. More than one of the men involved had had unconfessed nightmares, and as the days had worn on they had started to develop a haunted look as if the Hall were full of ghosts.

And maybe it was, Heath thought. God knows if any place had them it would be here.

As he turned the end of the stairs Heath's attention was caught by movement across the room. Smoke?

"Dammit, Foster, now you have me imagining your smoke," he muttered, more to break the eerie quiet than anything. A fat brown moth careened towards him and he suppressed a cry as it hit him fair in the face, its tiny wings fluttering horribly against his cheek. He flailed a hand at it, batting it away, and realised that the imagined smoke had actually been about a dozen of the clumsy creatures milling around over a workbench at the wall opposite.

He went nearer, and saw a lamp there. He shook it. Empty. But he recognised it as being twin to the lamp on the piano in the long room. Did Sgt Bell leave it here? He waved away the rest of the moths and examined the contents of the workbench. There was nothing else to indicate that Bell had been here.

Heath turned away from the bench and began to walk down the all-too-familiar rows of pits, their gory contents gleaming in the lamplight.

* * *

In the attic, Foster had wandered through rooms of junk, ancient empty servant quarters, storerooms, baggage rooms, nurseries and now Lucille's room. There was no trace of Bell anywhere.

Lucille's room was quite surprising. There was her bed and a few items of furniture with the expected throws and warm rugs, but not the clutter he expected from the woman who had filled her half of the long room downstairs with furniture from the rest of the Hall. There was little extra decoration, apart from the numerous jars and bottles on a large dresser beneath a high window. Foster examined the jars, expecting creams and feminine preparations, only to find a surprising number of them held the incarcerated corpses of insects, mainly moths and butterflies. He turned away from the dresser in distaste.

A drift of grey caught his eye from the bed, and he turned, expecting more of the nasty moths. No moths, just a faint haze of smoke. Foster swiftly moved to the bed. He couldn't smell smoke, but the haze in the air hung around him tangibly. He was confused, waved his hand to dispel the …. whatever it was. It did not disperse with the breeze from his hand, just seemed to part and then reform around his hand in the same hazy pattern, almost as if under its own power. Fascinated, he waved his hand at it again, watching it move around him. Obviously something in the air currents up here moved the dust around like this.

He turned, aware he was here to find Sgt. Bell, and not play with odd clouds of dust that moved by itself. He moved back down the room towards the door ready to move on to the last few rooms and then to the next floor down.

For a second he did not register that the dust still moved with him. He had reached the door before he was aware that the cloud had grown denser and surrounded him. Now he was alarmed by the dust's ability to move apparently independently of air currents. There was clearly something not normal going on here. Given the recent history of the Hall, Foster was sure that this was not a good thing.

He began to move more quickly, trying to move away from the dust cloud, but it still followed him, pressing around him, now starting to stifle him.

Foster began to panic. His mind could not accept that he was being suffocated by dust that moved by itself, could not rationally accept that dust could do such a thing. The dust was not just pressing around him, it was herding him out of Lucille's room and down the attic corridor, towards the stairs and the lift.

* * *

Heath passed along the line of settling pits. Ahead of him, there were what appeared to be fresh splashes of the scarlet clay. He hurried to the pit there, to confirm that the splotches of clay around the pit were fresh and still wet. This seemed to indicate at least that Sgt Bell had been here. But what had he been looking for down here? What had he been searching for in the pit, and where was he now?

Heath made his way back to the table at the end of the room and found a long handled paddle once used to scrape the clay from the pits. He carried it back to the freshly disturbed pit. Did Bell find something in the library to bring him down here, something that brought him to search this particular pit? Heath hefted the paddle over the wall of the pit to find what was hidden there.

* * *

Edith lit the lamps in the small room. The fire was low and she rang for more wood. A night porter arrived with the wood and topped up the fire for her, and as he did so it flared brightly for a moment. The porter leapt back in surprise and Edith gasped. The porter left quickly, and Edith was left breathing hard. What she saw, what the porter had not seen and would not have believed, was that the light from the flaring fire did not just illuminate the furniture in the small room. Briefly, there by the little desk, it also illuminated her darling Thomas.

* * *

Foster could barely breathe now, the dust pressed so close around his face. He could neither breathe nor see, careering blindly down the attic hallway towards what he hoped were the stairs down and out of this terrible, cursed house. He bounced off the walls, knocking a mirror from its hanging to smash on the floor. His panicked brain irrationally screamed at him that that was seven years bad luck and then immediately prayed that he would have the time to regret it.

He careered into the gate across the lift opening, grabbed hold of it and pulled it open. The lift was there, thank God, and he pulled open the inner door and threw himself into the sanctuary of his quickest means of escape. He felt for the lever for the lift to go down and pulled it. The lift shook violently, knocking him to the floor, momentarily giving him a space free of the thick dust. He took a deep, gasping breath of the clear air before the dust closed in again, but the lift did not start its descent. Instead it kept shaking, more and more violently, impossibly up and down and side to side. Now nausea joined the fear and suffocation assaulting Foster's body. He grabbed the cage door and tried to pull it open. As soon as he began to pull on it, the lift dropped, so suddenly that he almost floated from the floor. Then as suddenly it stopped, slamming him back down painfully, knocking what little breath he had out of him.

The lift stopped shaking, and Foster thought this was his chance to escape. He tried to pull open the door, but it refused to budge. As he strained to open it he realised he could breathe better, and almost immediately realised that the suffocating dust had gone. He breathed deeply, as though inhaling the perfumes of a summer meadow rather than the musty smells of the damp Hall.

Foster grasped the handle of the cage door, grateful that he only had one problem to tackle now - how to get out of the lift. He rattled the door, hoping to shake it loose, but it was well and truly stuck. He stood to the side and pulled with all his might. The door screeched and began to give, opening a few inches. The lift had dropped a fair few feet but was not quite at the level below the attic - once he had the door open he would have to climb through it down to the floor level. Then he would find Heath and they would get out of here.

"Bell or no Bell I'm not staying in this place any longer than it takes to get Heath." Foster said to himself.

* * *

Heath, meanwhile, was delving carefully and apprehensively in the clay pit trying to find out what Sgt Bell might have been looking for. He had found his share of unpleasant things in the pits, and did not look forward to finding more. Finally the paddle hit something solid, and Heath manipulated the paddle to bring whatever it was to the surface. The paddle kept slipping off whatever it was because of the wet clay. Slowly he managed to manoeuvre the object towards the side where he could see what he had.

Whatever it was was large and heavy. It didn't want to come up.

'Dammit,' Heath swore, 'come on up you bastard.'

* * *

Foster slipped an arm through the partially open lift cage door and pushed it open further - it screeched and kept sticking, but gradually worked further open, almost enough now, he thought, for him to slip through and down to the floor level. He sat on the lift floor and made to slide his legs through, ready to slip the rest of his body through. As he did so, the dust swept back into the lift, filling his eyes and mouth and nose and lungs. He felt the lift begin to shake again, rising and falling, making him nauseous. It gave a tremendous heave and shifted sideways. Foster heard a whipping sound and the lift cage seemed to crack around him. The floor of the lift began to fall away and as it did the dust cleared his eyes enough for him to watch the lift cable snap around him, noosing his neck neatly.

* * *

Heath had barely uttered the words before the shape beneath the clay rolled and cleared the surface and he found himself staring into the dead face of Sgt Bell. Horrified, he lost his footing on the slick floor and fell partially over the lip of the clay pit, face pressed to Bell's dead face, arms pushing off Bell's dead body to stop himself slipping further into the pit. Clay rushed into his mouth and he rolled sideways off the pit, vomiting scarlet clay and the remains of his day's food.

He pushed himself to his feet, slipping on clay and vomit, running for the stairs to the upper floors clay-blinded and horror-struck. He found his voice by the top of the first flight and screamed out to Foster to run from the house, that Bell was dead. He reached the ground level and passed the lift shaft, hearing noises from above. He shook the outer cage gates, shouting up the shaft for Foster, thinking he was coming down in the lift. As he looked upwards the noise came closer and Foster's body fell from the upper shaft with the cable tight round his neck. The body bounced to a stop before Heath, and the momentum tore Foster's head from his body in a bloody arc. Body and head continued their way down the shaft with Heath standing rooted to the spot petrified and disbelieving.

Now covered in wet clay and blood indistinguishable from each other, Heath suddenly found himself surrounded by whirling dust, sticking to the wetness on his hair and skin and clothes. Suddenly his paralysis ended and he hurtled from the hall, through the outer doors and out into the icy darkness with barely time but to register that at some point his bladder had emptied.


	3. A-knocking At The Door

Inspector John Regan was having what could at very best be described as a very bad day.

A search party at dawn had found Constable Heath, frozen to near death, part way back from Allerdale Hall, without either lantern or weather cape.

They had carried him back on a pallet, unable to communicate more than a few incoherent croaks to his rescuers. It had taken the small band of brave souls who had continued the search for his companions another two hours to make their way back to Allerdale Hall, searching a reasonable fifty yards either side of the road, to find no trace of either Sgt Bell or Constable Foster. The only evidence they found was the two weather capes draped across the chair at Sir Thomas's desk. Bell's and Heath's. Otherwise no trace other than what appeared to be a quantity of blood in and around the base of the lift, trapped askew in the iron cage of the lift shaft.

They had not ventured much further into the house, contenting themselves with shouting into the dead air of the hallway. No echoes greeted them, no replies, simply the creaking of old wood and the faint moan of a cold wind across the torn mouth of the broken roof. They had withdrawn back to the town, preferring the icy walk to the drier comparative warmth of the Hall's inner rooms, justifying it by saying there were not enough of them to usefully search the whole place. Not one of them felt anything but relief at leaving the place. Not one of them would ever admit to it.

* * *

Constable Heath had been brought back to the station where there were fires already lit and blankets at the ready to pile round him. The local doctor, Dr Montgomery, who acted as police doctor when needed, had told them to strip the frozen constable and wrap him well in plenty of warmed blankets, and place hot water bottles around the outside.

He looked grim as he examined the unfortunate young man's fingers and toes. Frostbite had already got to two toes on one foot and one on the other. The hands too were affected, pale and stiff, although it looked like the constable had managed to curl his frozen hands into his tunic pockets, and Montgomery thought the fingers might be saved. What might become of the toes was worrying him. He did not want to have to amputate, but if they started to turn black they would have to come off before the lad lost his feet. The toes were already white, but if they could be encouraged to warm up slowly he might get lucky.

Which, although good news, was small comfort to Inspector Regan with two officers still missing somewhere between here and Allerdale Hall.

* * *

And so, it was done. Lucille had taken the body parts of the policeman down to the settling tanks, her accustomed depositing place for those she had seen off. She sighed. A frail whisper of winter ice. Quite like old times, she mused. So many of them there had been, resting deep in the sucking scarlet clay. Now there were just those two. The irony amused her. They had been among those who had taken her little family from the pits.

So they were safely resting in their scarlet tomb. She hoped they would stay this time. She so hated having her family broken up. However, she would be more active this time in keeping her little kingdom defended from the intrusions of strangers. And now Edith and her American doctor were gone she could properly oversee the running of Allerdale Hall once more.

The others had come, of course. But the cowards had barely stayed long enough to view the damaged lift. Then they had turned tail and fled. Well for them, too, they would be unwelcome had they stayed longer. This was not the place to make yourself unwelcome in.

* * *

In the hotel in York, Edith had not slept. Her mind had been full of Thomas. Why had he appeared to her? Had he really been there? She was not sure if she was more affected by the possibility that he had really been there or the possibility that he had not.

She could not apply herself to anything. She read the newspaper, without actually taking it in. She sat with Alan, talked with him, about everything yet about nothing. She had letters to write, things to organise, but nothing could occupy her mind. Seeing Thomas had thrown her mind into chaos again.

Alan in his turn could see that she was in turmoil. His wounds had been slow to heal. Thomas had carefully followed Alan's instruction on where to stab him with the least damage, but the wound was still deep. _Well for me_ , he thought, _that Thomas had done it, and not Lucille. She would have gutted me without compunction._

His wounds were healing, as were Edith's physical injuries. But hers went so much deeper. _She might never recover_ he thought. Alan loved her, had always loved her, but neither his love nor his skill as a doctor could cure the wounds on her heart and mind.

Edith needed to organise clothes for herself, having left most of her things at the Hall. The clothes she had left there would not have done anyway. They were the clothes of a carefree young woman embarking on her marital journey, all burgeoning ripeness and readiness to be a wife and mother. The ripe-fruit colours, flounces and blousy sleeves no longer held any appeal for her. And they reminded her of her naiveté. The world had changed for her since then, and she had changed with it. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Having fled only in her nightclothes, she had been able to get ready-made items in Allerdale to tide her over. Dr Montgomery had set her leg properly and patched up Alan's wounds, but he had been eager to get them to a proper hospital, and that meant York. He had organised it all - a two hour journey to the nearest railway station and the awful train journey into York. They had both spent almost two weeks in the hospital in York, and even though her leg was all but healed now, a month on, she still needed a stick, and probably always would.

She rubbed at the leg absently. It still hurt her. She was irresistibly reminded of that waltz with Thomas the night he had persuaded her to accompany him to the party in Buffalo. She doubted she would ever waltz again, but then, without Thomas she doubted she would ever want to. She could almost feel his delicate touch on her back, her hand in his, the way he whirled her around, the candle blowing between them. Her heart had been captured before that, she had realised, almost the first moment she saw him, but that moment he had held her so gently and respectfully in his arms had sealed their fates forever. Tears sprang to her eyes and she dashed them away, angry at herself for being so weak. She did not even notice the flames in the hearth flaring for an instant.

More in order to give herself something to do than any willingness to start getting her life organised again, she asked at the reception desk for a recommendation for a seamstress. The hotel manager was pleased to be able to recommend a woman his guests had used before and had spoken highly of.

Edith had decided to walk, even though the leg was still painful. Alan would have told her off had he known. She smiled at the thought. But she needed this solitary time, and the seamstress was not far. It would take her mind off things she did not want to have to think about.

* * *

The Inspector has sat with Heath for hours. Dr Montgomery had said Heath might take days to recover enough to talk, but Regan did not have days. None of them did. He had two good men missing, and Heath was the only chance he had of finding out what had happened.

The warm blankets were regularly replaced, warmed bottles placed around him. The doctor had even tried an infusion into the veins of warmed saline. That seemed to do the most good, for the pink had begun to return to Heath's skin, and his eyes had flickered briefly. His fingers were already beginning to look less white, and the doctor said he hoped they had escaped permanent damage.

But as yet he had not spoken. So Heath had initially had men sit with him, then had taken over himself, talking to the young man and trying to get him to respond.

Then finally, at around one in the afternoon, Heath had muttered something. Regan did not catch it at first.

'Heath - say it again lad. What did you say?'

'Dead. They're dead.' Heath did not speak again that day.

* * *

The visit to the seamstress had give Edith some purpose and taken her mind off her worries for a few hours. Her new palette was grey and lavender, in silk and velvet, suitable for a woman in mourning for her lost husband, but not the stark black she could not bring herself to wear. More refined, elegant lines, too, no flounces or puffed sleeves. She had insisted on touches of deep blue on her dresses, a panel or embroidery here or there. She left for the hotel wearing a new hat, grey, with grey silk roses and a single deep blue feather. The colour of Thomas's eyes.

* * *

Regan did not know what to do. His only option was to go back to the hall with another search party and try to find out what went on there. Again. What the hell was wrong with that place?

It was too late to get anything going today. There was not enough daylight left to organise everything and get there with time to make a thorough search before they were hampered by the cold and dark. Instead he organised carts and men with lights to meet at the police station, ready to depart at seven the next morning, so with transport they would be able to get to the Hall by first light. It was time to find out what secrets the Hall still held.

* * *

And so in the cold and dark the next morning they gathered in the centre of the town, fifteen men, with carts and horses, and set out on the road to the Hall. None of them were in any hurry to get there, but Regan was not about to let them drag their feet. This was his chance to get back into the Hall with enough people to find out what the hell had happened to Bell and Foster and get out of there before nightfall.

It was full light by the time they reached the Hall. The impressive building sat waiting for them, lurking at the end of the drive. It didn't look evil, Regan thought, just dilapidated and sad, sat there empty and unloved. He wondered what they would find.

They passed under the gateway with the odd motto and Regan found himself wondering not for the first time why a second motto - and why 'Death Conquers All'? Even if it does. His head started to itch as some of the hairs raised on his scalp. _Well that's not a good sign_ , he thought.

* * *

Edith awoke with a start. It was later than she expected, full light when she would have woken in the dark at this time of year normally. Her head ached and she was fuzzy with a half remembered dream drifting around the back of her brain. What was it? Men and horses, and ice. The dream faded away out of reach.

* * *

The men gathered outside the massive oak door to the Hall, waiting for Regan's instructions.

'Light the lamps.' He said. 'There are dark areas and we need as much light as possible. Do not go anywhere alone, any of you, not even for a piss. Stay in twos or threes. We start at the top of the building, and five of you will stay in the entrance hall at all times. If you need to come out, do not come out alone and do not leave another man alone. Keep your eyes and ears open. We'll get to the bottom of this if it's the last thing we do.' _Good choice of phrase, there Jack_ , he mentally kicked himself.

* * *

They all went inside, trying to cluster as close as possible.

For some of them it was the first time inside, and there was some surprise at the extensively embellished wood staircase with its alcoves and carvings. More surprise at the gaping open roof and the eddying leaflitter swirling in the open spaces of the hall. The lift shaft elicited further interest, some of the men there had never seen a lift, let alone a lift in a private house. The lift base was wedged across the shaft, and around the area was a blackened stain which appeared to be blood. So the men who had briefly visited this place yesterday were at least right about that, Regan thought grimly. No certainty whose blood, but it was a fair bet he would not like the answer to the question. A fair amount of muttering was to be heard among the onlookers.

'Alright, alright, settle down you lot. We're here to find out what happened to our men, whatever that was. Right, you five, stay there in the entrance. If anyone tries to get out, you nick 'em. Remember what I said about keeping together. The rest of you, follow me. We start at the top.'

Regan led the men upstairs, leaving a nervous bunch of five lurking around the main doorway.

* * *

Lucille was annoyed. Who were these interlopers who were disturbing her home? There were too many of them, and she had no intention of wearing herself out seeing them all off. She would keep an eye on them and watch they did not take advantage of her hospitality.

* * *

The top of the house, where Thomas and Lucille had retreated to make their nests. On the main landing fat brown moths crawled around the walls or hovered unpleasantly around their lamps. Regan split the men into groups of three and starting at the end of the attic hallway allocated each group a room. He joined one group.

Lucille was in no mood for them to disturb her so she locked her bedroom door.

'Sir,' One of the men called out to Regan. 'This door is locked, Sir. Can't tell if it's a storeroom.'

'That, I believe, is Lady Lucille's room. And it wasn't locked last time we came here. We'll check the other rooms first. Then we'll take a look there. Come on, let's get this floor checked, see if either of our men is about up here.'

They checked the other attic rooms, Thomas's workshop, the servants rooms and ancient family storerooms. The damp rooms were filled with the accumulated forgotten ephemera of generations, mouldering in their neglect. No sign of either of the missing men.

Clouds of dust swirled in the disturbed air flows, and the fat brown moths flittered around in little swarms, bumping into the men on the landing and pinging off the lamp housings.

Back at the door to Lucille's room, Regan tried the door again, meaning to force it open. It surprised him by opening easily this time, and he looked inside, not going fully in. It somehow seemed slightly disrespectful to be in Lady Lucille's room, even if she was dead. The room was small and cluttered, nowhere to hide a body. It appeared to be dusty though, and a thin black swirl hovered in the air. Regan shuddered slightly and left the room.

Lucille had watched him open her door, having decided to let him in and see what he did. She watched as he looked around the room. His gaze had passed over her unseeing, and he left, shutting the door firmly behind him.

'Locked, eh? Try it a bit harder next time, Simmons.' The other men grinned.

The next floor down held the main family bedrooms. Lots of them, plus a whole corridor of closets and storerooms, dressing rooms and several bathrooms.

* * *

Lucille had got fed up with watching the group move through her home. They would not find anything, and were no threat to her. She had lost interest and decided to go and play her piano instead.

The five men in the hall were meant to stay there, they knew, but it was difficult to ignore the strains of the piano drifting faintly from the main room off the rear of the hall. They spent some time shuffling uncomfortably, trying to pretend it wasn't there. But it was there. They decided among themselves - three of them would go and look while the other two would wait here to guard the door.

The long room across the back of the hall was cold, there not having been a fire there for some weeks. As the three made their way into it and looked towards Lady Lucille's half of the room, the piano fell silent. They looked at each other. There was no possible way they had all imagined the same thing. The faint smudge of grey smoke went unnoticed as the three of them backed carefully out of the long room and back to the hall entrance.

Lucille smiled to herself, enjoying the confusion she had caused, then resumed her waltz.

The men in the hall were getting seriously upset now, could not fathom the source of of the music, and were not sure they wanted to know. This time they all five approached the long room. For a second after they came in sight of the piano Lucille kept playing, just to upset them further. They all heard the piano clearly being played, saw the piano stool just as clearly empty. Regan had never said anything about ghostly piano playing when he told them to stay in the hall.

They moved away quickly, gathering around the Hall door the furthest away from the long room, muttering amongst themselves.

'This isn't right.' one said. 'Things like this don't happen. What is Regan going to say if we tell him there's no-one playing the piano but the piano's playing? He'll have us all put away.'

'I don't care what he says. There was nothing said about ghosts when we volunteered for this.' said another.

'Don't talk daft, how can it be ghosts? There's no such things as ghosts.' said another.

'There must be some explanation. Sir Thomas made mechanical toys and such, it must be one of his. Someone's having a joke with us, with a mechanical piano. Or maybe a phonogram.'

Buoyed by the man's logic and certainty, they made their collective way back to the main room, determined to get to the bottom of things.

The piano was still empty, silent, dusty and cold as the rest of the house. There was no waltz, no ghostly fingers caressing the keys, no strain of music floating through the room. The wary men stood in a small group, staring around them, looking for any evidence of either Sir Thomas's mechanical marvels or a ghostly pianist. Neither was evident.

There was no point in standing around waiting for something else to happen. They moved back to the entrance, no wiser and no nearer any conclusion.

Five minutes later the sound again faded back into existence.

'That's enough, now. If this is a joke it's gone too far. We need to find out what's going on.'

'I don't like it. If it's a joke that means there is someone there playing the joke on us. If that's the case, where are they?'

'Well maybe we should look for them.'

'Regan told us to stay here. We can't do that and find the sod who's messing with us.'

'Well as long as someone stays here, we're still doing what he told us aren't we? We don't all need to be here. Some of us can find out what's happening while the rest stay here.'

This arrangement seemed to fulfil both the need to stay on guard as Regan had instructed them and their desire to find out what was going on. Two of them would go and thoroughly search the long room from end to end, the other three would stay and guard the hall and the door, make sure no-one slipped out.

* * *

The two men, Smith and White, started by the long library-end window, so the light was from behind them as they moved through the room. The two weather capes still lay over the chair at Sir Thomas's desk. The only evidence of either Bell or Heath ever having been in the place.

Sir Thomas's half of the room was empty, clearly, nowhere to hide in the sparsely furnished area. Lady Lucille's half of the room, as they faced it, looked cluttered enough for half a dozen people to be concealed amongst the eclectic mix of furnishings. They separated and picked their way through it, around and between the furniture, looking behind everything. No-one leaped out at them, nothing lay concealed as far as they could tell. Lucille simply stood by the piano watching them with amusement as they scoured the room, pretending they were not frightened.

Smith was examining the piano now, looking beneath it to see if there were hidden mechanisms. He could find nothing. While his fellow continued working his way between the furniture, he lifted the lid of the piano to see what it concealed, peering in at the strings. Lucille was beginning to get annoyed. Her piano was out of bounds to these meddlers. She leaned close to his ear.

'No'

He jumped visibly.

'What the...? Was that you? Did you speak?'

White stopped and turned towards him.

'I didn't speak. What's up?'

'I heard someone speak. A voice said "No" in my ear it sounded like.'

'You're imagining things. Or maybe there is someone in here. Where did it sound like it was coming from?'

'Right here, right next to me.'

The other man came over, and they moved all round the piano, looking under and over it, then turned and examined the surroundings closely. There was no phonograph, nothing that could have produced the sound. Lucille was amused again as they became more confused.

'But I heard it clearly.'

'You imagined it.' White moved away from the piano, went back to searching the rest of Lucille's part of the room.

Smith was not convinced. He did not know what was going on, but he was sure he had actually heard the voice. He wasn't sure whether it was worse to have heard it or imagined it, but he definitely had heard it. He lifted the keyboard cover and started plinking the keys to see if there was anything that might show it was mechanical.

Lucille was outraged. How dare he touch her piano!

'I said No!' she hissed at him again, as she angrily slammed down the cover on Smith's hand, hard enough to crush several fingers badly.

Smith's scream practically shook the walls, and brought White and the three men from the hall running. Blood was flowing from the mangled fingers, falling to the floor in splashing drops.

* * *

Regan heard the scream as he was leaving one of the dilapidated rooms on the second floor.

'Stay here you three, keep searching.'

He came haring down the stairs with half a dozen men behind him. The men from the hall were not in evidence and he followed the sound of Smith's cries and the babble of the men's voices into the long room.

'What the hell's going on now?' He shouted over the hubbub.

'His hand - it got shut in the piano..' White started.

'The key cover slammed on it. Someone slammed it. It didn't fall, it was slammed hard,' Smith gasped out.

It was fairly obvious that the hand was badly broken. One finger was almost completely severed and two looked crushed and mangled. _How the hell did it slam hard enough to do that on its own?_ Regan thought. He was not a doctor, but he realised quickly enough that if those fingers were in any way salvageable, he needed to get Smith back to Dr Montgomery as quickly as possible.

'Right, you and you get Smith back to town.' He allocated two men to get Smith away.

'Take my buggy, it'll be quicker. The rest of you, we will keep searching this place until we find out what's going on'.

* * *

Lucille hadn't hung around to watch the proceedings, instead flitting upwards to see what the remaining three men were doing upstairs. She tracked them down as two of them entered the master bedroom. The third was in the bathroom. Her and Thomas's bathroom.

An indoor toilet was something of a novelty to a man living in a house with an outside WC. He turned from the toilet, buttoning up his fly, as the bathroom door slowly shut. He made to open it, but it didn't open.

'Yeah, very funny. Unlock the door you daft buggers.' No reply. His mates had already gone.

'Hey, open up, this isn't funny.' He pulled and pushed the door again, turning the handle this way and that, thinking he'd maybe simply mistaken the turn of the door handle. A drift of grey smoke floated past his eye and he leaped back in surprise.

'Shit!'

Nothing there. He turned around, scanning the room for evidence of anything he could use to pry the door open. He caught sight of something. He jumped, then realised it was himself, reflected in the large mirror, looking a little pale and sweaty. He breathed heavily. The smoke drifted past his eyes again. He flapped his hand in the air.

'Bloody dust everywhere.'

The dust or smoke or whatever it was did not disperse. He flapped again. Still it didn't disperse. Now he looked even more pale and sweaty.

'Get a grip, man.' He told his reflection. As he looked in the mirror, he realised the smoke or dust seemed to be restricted to a certain area beside him. He watched it, momentarily distracted from the fact he was locked in the bathroom. As he looked, he noticed what looked like a loose edging on the mirror frame. He thought he might be able to use it to lever the door open.

He went over to the frame and pried the loose edging free. As he did so, a crack shot across the mirror and a large section of it fell free and landed on the floor breaking into loose shards.

Lucille was incandescent. How dare the idiot!

Scooping up one of the shards she bore down on him, visible to him at this last second as the shard dragged across his throat, his face set in horror. He didn't even have time to scream.

'I will spare you your seven years bad luck, you imbecile.' she hissed, the last thing he heard as he watched his life blood spray out across the room.

* * *

In York, Edith found herself suddenly dizzy. She passed her hand across her eyes, sat heavily on the edge of the bed. A wave of nausea swept over her. She dashed to the bathroom where her stomach emptied itself of her breakfast. Her knees gave out and she sat on the floor, shaking.

* * *

By the time they found him he was dead, the blood all but drained from him to lie in a spreading pool on the bathroom floor.

Regan was lost for words. _How could this happen?_

'I told you, stay together.' He didn't know what else to say. The two other men would be living with this for the rest of their lives. Regan rubbed his eyes. They would need to leave here, take the body back to town. They had come looking for two dead men, would be leaving with yet another.

Lucille was slightly disappointed that she would be deprived of a new addition to her collection. Still, he was a spur-of-the-moment thing, she would survive. She still had her two other men down in the settling pits. She watched from an upper window as the group left, eleven live and one dead.


End file.
